


You want what you want

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Lovecraft Country (TV)
Genre: F/F, getting one last story in before it all goes to hell, post 1x8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: The few feet that separate them feel like a chasm: take one more step, and Ruby knows she will never stop falling.
Relationships: Christina Braithwhite/Ruby Baptiste
Comments: 4
Kudos: 110





	You want what you want

It is well after midnight by the time Ruby returns to the Braithwhite manor. Her hands shake a little as she fumbles around in her purse for the gate keys, looking nervously over her shoulder to make sure she hasn’t been followed—by cops, by monsters, by…by who the fuck even knows, at this point. Only after the screams and the shooting had stopped had she dared to get off the floor and peek through the shattered windows, just in time to see the monster go bounding away from Leti and Tic and burrow itself back into the street where it had come from. Leti, covered in blood, had begged her to stay for the night and not go out again, and Ruby had agreed—but then she found herself putting her shoes back on and slipping out through the back door anyway. Back to Christina.

She finally finds the key and passes through the gate. The silver sedan is parked in the middle of the driveway but all the lights in the house are off, for once. For all the time she has spent here in the past few weeks, she has never once seen Christina sleeping. She supposes she must, of course, but she cannot quite picture it in her head. With her, Christina alternates between warmth and coldness, intimacy and distance, man and woman, human and…something else. By now, Christina has seen Ruby as her full self many times over. Ruby cannot say if she has ever seen the true Christina. Or—maybe she has. Maybe there are no hidden depths. Maybe Christina is neither more nor less than what she appears to be. Somehow, that is the most frightening thought of all.

“Hello?” Ruby calls into the darkness. No one answers.

Her feet carry her to the door to the basement. Christina has always kept it locked before, but this time, she finds it slightly ajar. In her dreams, she has sometimes pictured William and Hillary—the _real_ William and Hillary—rising naked from their beds in the basement and coming together with their hands intertwined to dance a dance of death, of graves, of oblivion.

When she turns on the lights at the bottom of the stairs, however, she finds them exactly where she knew they would be: lying motionless in bed, waiting to be used. But in the corner over by William’s body, she finds Christina too, hunched over with her knees drawn up to her chest like a child. She flinches as the room is flooded with light.

“So Tic cast the spell,” Christina says before Ruby can speak. Her voice is cool and controlled as ever, yet her eyes are swollen and red from crying. “What did it look like?”

“I didn’t get a good look,” Ruby answers. She crosses her arms and gives her a hard stare. “I did see the bodies it left in the yard, though. What was it?”

“A shoggoth,” Christina murmurs, but Ruby can tell that her interest is already waning. She sounds grimly triumphant as she gingerly straightens herself out on the floor, wincing a little as she stretches her legs. “I died tonight.”

“You what?”

“I said I died tonight.” She presses one hand against the wall and pushes herself slowly to her feet. “You wanted me to feel how you felt. You wanted me to feel guilty and ashamed. So I paid some men. I tried it.”

It is only then that Ruby notices the faint red marks around her neck. Her heart suddenly clenches in her chest. “The fuck is _wrong_ with you?” she demands. “I didn’t ask you to do this shit. That’s not what I wanted.”

Christina takes a step forward and nearly stumbles. She gives her a beseeching look, but Ruby doesn’t budge. “Then what do you want? Why are you here? Why do you keep coming back?”

Ruby wants to know what would make her scared. She wants to see her lose control, she wants to make her feel something, for once in her life. She wants her to need her, beyond whatever grand scheme she has in play. She wants to see her be _human_.

She wants to believe that maybe one day Christina will see her be human, too. Because sometimes—holding her close, tenderly taking off her clothes, sponging the sweat from her back—sometimes she can almost believe it. Almost.

Yet in this moment, the few feet that separate them feel like a chasm: take one more step, and she knows she will never stop falling. Leti thinks she is delusional for not turning and running the other way; that Christina has pulled the wool over her eyes with promises and magic and trapped her like a butterfly in a spider web, and the more she struggles to get free, the more she will entangle herself. But these are things Ruby has known from the beginning. She knows that this fragile equilibrium cannot last. She knows that one way or another, the end will be here soon and one or both of them will not survive.

Christina takes one more wobbling step forward and then drops to her knees. After a moment, Ruby takes a seat on the floor and observes her. The red marks around her neck are already fading and by sunrise they will be gone. It will be like nothing ever happened. The chasm sits between them, an inch wide and a mile down, growing deeper by the minute.

“I want what I want,” Ruby sighs. “You want what you want. For now, that works for us. What happens when we end up wanting different things?”

Christina shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Ruby laughs, unable to help herself. “Christina Braithwhite, admitting she doesn’t know something. Didn’t think that was possible.”

She thinks Christina will be offended, but instead she just sits there and gazes at her. She tentatively reaches her hand out across the chasm towards Ruby, and in spite of everything, Ruby finds herself reaching back.


End file.
